John Challis The Green Parcel: Observer review & poem film
'John Challis writes with beauty and passion of the so-called every day… he gives us all majesty and a kind of shimmering quality…’ – Ian McMillan
The rural terrain of John Challis’s second full-length collection The Green Parcel (Bloodaxe Books, June 2026) provides a new lens for exploring history, class and work, our relationship to the natural world, and cycles of growth and decay. Much of his debut collection The Resurrectionists concerned working lives in the city: his father a London cabbie, his grandfather a market porter. Here his focus shifts to a crumbling stately home in Northumberland brought to life through the voices of the grounds as well as those who inhabit it and maintain it. London is at a distance. We find ourselves beyond, in backyards, on motorways, in fields, searching for the green patch in Kent, where an East End family picked hops in the summer.
John Challis was born in London in 1984. His pamphlet, The Black Cab (Poetry Salzburg, 2017), was a 2019 New Writing North Read Regional title. His first book-length collection, The Resurrectionists, was published by Bloodaxe in 2021. He has held several residencies. In 2015 he was a poet-in-residence with the Northern Poetry Library and chosen as one of the Poetry Trust’s Aldeburgh Eight. His other residencies have included ones at Keats Shelley House in Rome, and at Seaton Delaval Hall, a National Trust property in Northumberland, which produced Hallsong, a pamphlet of poems, and a film collaboration with filmmaker Christo Wallers. Poems from his Seaton Delaval Hall residency are also included in his second full-length collection The Green Parcel (Bloodaxe Books, June 2026).
He has received a Pushcart Prize and a Northern Writers’ Award for his work and was Highly Commended in the 2021 Forward Prizes for Poetry. John has also written reviews and essays and produced poetry for public art projects in Northumberland. He holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Newcastle University, where he worked as a Research Associate. He now teaches at York St John University and lives in York.
Scroll down to watch the film London Draft featuring John Challis reading and speaking about poems from his second collection The Green Parcel, and Hallsong, a 2022 video filmed at Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland featuring the poems written during his residency.
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FORTHCOMING REVIEW IN THE OBSERVER
The Observer, Poetry Books of the Month, forthcoming 31 May 2026
John Challis’s second full-length collection The Green Parcel is due to be reviewed as one of Jade Cuttle's Poetry Books of the Month in The Observer of 31 May 2026 ahead of the book's publication in June.
The feature will appear in print in The New Review supplement of The Observer. The online edition will be accompanied by the poem 'The Orbital' from The Green Parcel.
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London Draft: a poem film by David Spittle, 24 April 2026
In February 2026, John Challis and filmmaker David Spittle visited the industrial Thames estuary and the Cranham Marsh Nature Reserve near where Challis grew up, to explore connections between memory, place and poetry. London Draft is a record of searching for the places that leave their traces on the imagination and the self.
The film includes John Challis reading his poems ‘Youth’, ‘Night God, ‘London’s Edge’, ‘Pylons’, and ‘The Green Parcel’ from his second collection The Green Parcel (Bloodaxe, 2026).
A film by David Spittle, with music by Days Like Television.
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Hallsong: a poem film by Christo Wallers, 1 November 2022
Film by Christo Wallers, with poetry by John Challis, written during his time as writer-in-residence at Seaton Delaval Hall in Northumberland. Filmed on location at the National Trust property, with poems read by John Challis as well as by Seaton Delaval Hall staff.
Music: Wind Harp - Thomas Rex Beverley
Hallsong was created as part of a residency produced by the National Trust and New Writing North within Rising Stars, a partnership with Northumbria University which formed part of Seaton Delaval Hall’s National Lottery Heritage Fund-supported Curtain Rises project.
The poems read are 'Winter Opening Hours', 'Hallsong', 'What we know', 'Ha-Ha', 'The best is still below', 'The Servants', 'Letter from a Farmer', 'Underhouse', 'Conductor', 'Closing Night', 'A Way of Knowing' and 'The Mausoleum'. The poems were first published in the limited edition pamphlet Hallsong: poems for Seaton Delaval Hall (New Writing North/the National Trust, 2022).
All of these poems (apart from 'The Servants, 'Letter from a Farmer' and 'Conductor') are now included in John Challis's second full-length collection The Green Parcel (Bloodaxe, 2026).
FORTHCOMING JOINT ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT
Tuesday 23 June 2026, 7pm BST
Online launch event with John Challis, Frank Ormsby and Lawrence Sail
Joint online launch event for new June 2026 titles by John Challis, Frank Ormsby and Lawrence Sail.
All three poets will be celebrating the publication of their new books, with John Challis and Lawrence Sail by reading live from their books. Frank Ormsby draws on his experience of living with Parkinson's Disease in his recent work and is unable to take part, but has been able to make audio recordings to be played during this event with screen-shared poems from his book.
The post-reading discussion with the host, Bloodaxe editor Neil Astley, will feature John Challis and Lawrence Sail along with Frank Ormsby's friend, the writer and broadcaster Malachi O'Doherty, who made the audio recordings.
This free Bloodaxe launch event will be streamed on YouTube Live on this YouTube page: https://youtube.com/live/6OitDbheZ8A
Watch live or later via YouTube.
PAST READINGS & RECORDINGS
The Verb: After Dark Festival: The Chance to Change, BBC Radio 3, Friday 25 March 2022, 10pm
John Challis was a guest on a special edition of The Verb recorded in front of an audience at the After Dark Festival at Sage Gateshead. John read from his debut collection The Resurrectionists. The book is mostly set in London, but John has been based in North-East England for over ten years.
The recording took place on Saturday 18 March 2022 at Sage Gateshead’s Northern Rock Foundation Hall.
Listen here.
NEWCASTLE POETRY FESTIVAL 2022
John Challis reads poems from The Resurrectionists: 'The Knowledge'; 'Plague Ground'; 'This is the market'; 'Thames'; 'Driving home from hospital after the hottest day of the year'; 'Night Change'; 'Hansard'; 'Naming the Light' and 'Prayer at the Edge of the West'. Filmed by Peter Hebden. Special thanks to Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts.
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John Challis's first full-length collection The Resurrectionists was published by Bloodaxe Books in June 2021.
An interview with John Challis is on Shuddhashar Magazine here, along with some poems from The Resurrectionists.
'Thames' from The Resurrectionists was discussed by Carol Rumens in her online Poem of the Week column in The Guardian of 20 September 2021. Read here.
Two poems from the collection were featured online in Wild Court here.
The Resurrectionists was reviewed as a Poetry Book of the Month in The Guardian of 5 June 2021. A slightly longer version of Ben Wilkinson's review is online here.
[27 May 2026]
